Love Before Justice
by Taichi Ishida
Summary: (warning: dark, 1shot) After the war, the pilots attend a boys boarding school in Japan. Love strikes a chord, but what happens when Quatre’s sisters want him to attend their colony based alma mater instead?


Title: Love before Justice

Summary: (warning: dark) After the war, the pilots attend a boys boarding school in Japan. Love strikes a chord, but what happens when Quatre's sisters want him to attend their colony based alma mater instead?

A/N:

1. in answer to Raletha's Spring Ficlet Challenge 

2. I'd be happy to continue it if you guys want me to 

3. please review

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Sneakers pounded across the cracking pavement. Vaguely, his mind registered steady panting resounding in time with each bounding thump. His lungs burned in his chest; every breath felt like it'd be his last.

_Not fast enough._

Golden rays of reflected sunlight danced across the face of his watch, as he checked it for the 5th time since he left his dorm. _5 minutes until Quatre's plane departs. I can still…_He continued his sprint. After the war, he and the other Gundam pilots accepted, albeit reluctantly, Dr. J's offer to facilitate their transfer into a normal life. A normal boys boarding school centered in Japan's countryside.

That's when he noticed it. The secret looks. The meaningful glances. The inability to resist a tempting peek in the locker room. He _liked_ Quatre. Of all the students in the school, it _had_ to be Quatre. In retrospect, he occasionally wondered if he had a masochistic streak, or simply wished for whatever he couldn't have. The pilots naturally had a little trouble adapting to their new school, well, most of them. Quatre, with his diplomatic manners, cherub-innocent eyes, and almost feminine grace, easily slipped into the role of class darling. Well, it _looked_ easy. The blond soon clarified that misconception.

As soon as he and Quatre had reached their dorm at the close of the first day's classes, Quatre tumbled in bed, catching on a set of black sheets from the bunk above his and collapsing into a pitiful a heap of sheets. Though muffled, he could still be heard muttering miserably at his former-gundam-pilot roommate about the misfortune of being chased, followed, stalked, and admired by their many classmates. The poor boy would later apologize profusely for it, but history eventually repeated itself, until it began to cycle. Quatre gets incessantly pursued by fan/classmates; Quatre rants to roommate; Quatre apologetic the next morning. Although Quatre's rants could be tough on the ears, the cycle actually made him happy, to know that he was the only one who saw the real Quatre. Still, those rants and cycles were the same reason why he never dared to confess his love. At least as a roommate, he could be a peer, a friend. Being able to stay close even as a friends, was immeasurably better than sinking into the masses of 'bloodthirsty admirers,' as Quatre had so irritably put it. And so, for a time, being so close yet so far, was a sweet torment he was willing to bear.

But now Quatre was leaving. Quatre's sisters had decided that the Earth based boarding school wasn't good enough for their precious baby and were shipping him off to their alma mater, where all two dozen odd sisters had somehow attended the same school. The choice to leave for the colony-based Great Eight Academy, wasn't a decision that was forced, just merely accepted. For two weeks, neither roommate said a word about it and now here he was, chasing after what he hoped was Quatre's not-yet-departed plane. It wasn't until the other pilots decked him over the head this morning and tossed him a recorder that he realized…

"C'mon, Cat. You have the whole school at your beck and call, what more do you want?"

"The one person who will never see me _that_ way"

"me?…Ow."

"not even if I was surrounded by girls and you were the last guy on earth, baka"

"Ow…those words hurt…*pause*….yeesh. so smitten and you've only been here for a couple days … the guy you like … he's one of us isn't he?"

The voice recorded with Quatre wasn't his. The very fact that someone had the gall to record his roommate without his knowledge made his blood boil over. Still, vengeance upon the well-intentioned friends would have to wait. _Love before Justice_.

No sooner had those whispers of words left his lips, than the soles of his shoes stepped soundly on the runway—just in time to see the Winner shuttle speeding off the platform and into the sky.

Wells of tears burst within him. Torment and rage seized a gun from his ankle, and threw all it had into aiming for the shuttle's fuel supply. To his horror, he watched his hands fire bullet after bullet of Gundanium alloy, piercing the hull, sparking the explosion.

A deafening roar raged across the open fields as the shuttle was shred to pieces; its graceful white body giving way to a deformed blaze of fireworks that tore across the sky. His knees could no longer support him. There, he knelt amidst the shower of shuttle fragments, absorbing the consequence of when he had done.

Kill. Kill. Kill. Can't have him. Kill him. Kill Kill Kill. Kill me.

Once a again, he raised the firearem, a twisted smile twitching at his lips. His bout of insanity, sudden and irrational though it was, had left him behind, leaving one bullet in its wake. One bullet to end it all. _Justice after love, afterall_.

Alternative Ending:

*bang* An approaching figure shot the gun out of his hands.

"So Iria was right, " the shadow spoke.

Twin pools of sapphire watered as they met the kneeling boy's clouded eyes.

"You were out to assassinate me, after all. You think I wouldn't notice the ground glass in my dinner? The pills you tried to slip in my drink?"

*bang*

Quatre shook. The face of the boy he loved was veiled in dark strands of blood-drenched hair. Brushing back his own golden tresses with his gun, he fired.

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A/N:

1. in answer to Raletha's Spring Ficlet Challenge 

2. I'd be happy to continue it if you guys want me to 

3. please review


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